Housing starts jump 6.6% in April

Housing starts followed a seasonal pattern of rising in April -- a full 6.6% increase over last month's estimate. But they still fell below year-ago levels.

Privately owned housing starts came in at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1,172,000, up from March's revised estimate of 1,099,000. However, this was 1.7% below the April 2015 rate of 1,192,000.

Single-family starts experienced a slightly less dramatic increase of 3.3% to 778,000, up from last month's revised figure of 753,000.

More of the same appears to be coming down the pipeline, with building permits up 3.6% for the month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1,116,000, but down 5.3% year-over-year.

Regionally, the South was the hotbed of most of the housing starts activity (with 616,000 total starts, up 14.1%).

However, the Midwest experienced the sharpest month-over-month increase of 22.2% to 187,000 starts.

The Northeast and the West both declined since March, down 7.6% and 10.0%, respectively.